Yearly Archives: 2012

In my yard, we grew a pumpkin vine, and from that vine, we harvested one runty pumpkin. It isn’t much wider than a post-it note, and since it grew side-ways, it has to lay on its side because it doesn’t have a flat bottom like all the store-bought pumpkins.

While they provide you with really great incentives for leveling tillers, they don’t provide very good incentives for making friends with the other farmers.

I was really confused, however, for a long time about what the point of those extra factions were. They aren’t related to getting better food buffs (you have to do that by leveling each of the six “ways” in cooking).

When you are “best friends” with them, they will come to your farm, stand there and look pretty, and give you vanity things (like animals) that aren’t super important. There is a cricket pet that comes from Cho, but other than that, you mostly get seed packs and vanity items, and hitting a high enough level with Gina Mudclaw puts a mailbox closer to your your farm (instead of having to use the one up by the inn).

When Gina mudclaw is on your farm, she’ll stand around and act as a vendor (same as she does 40 yards away in the market), and you pay less money to get predictions from Jogu the drunk. However, none of the friends on your farm make the unwanted pests go away. Your farm is still full of weeds, birds, vines, and other vermin that you have to pull out all the time. While you can get a faster way of dealing with dry or bug-infested crops (the rep grains during the general tillers rep gives you an irrigation system and some bug spray), but none of the other inconveniences go away when you level up your farm and gain reputation with the other farm NPCs.

When you are best friends with other farmers, and you invite them to “help” on your farm, someone should do something other than just stand around and watch you do all the work. Just making the farm space look a little prettier doesn’t really “help” me do my farm chores. Can’t someone hand me a Weed Wacker, some vermin-be-gone, or a scarecrow that chases away the birds? That’s all I really want. Otherwise, I don’t really see the point in doing annoying daily quests just get to “best friends” with people who don’t do much for me in return.

The whole farming thing has started to “grow” on me, but I think that they could do more to make planting things enjoyable.

Hey guys. So it’s been a while since I (Garnaph) last posted. As many of you know, I had to vanish for a while due to the birth of my daughter. Even when the dust settled on that and life started to return to normal, I realized that most of the news that everyone was talking about was from the MoP beta, and since I wasn’t in the beta, I didn’t really have anything to add.

However, with the MoP release, there’s a lot going on, and I’ve finally got something useful to say again. I missed writing articles, so I’m very keen to get back into it. I’m working on a new Power Auras series for the re-written version of the mod (as an update to my original series), but since the writers have been holding back the new version, I’m waiting until they release it so everyone can play around with it after reading my posts.

What I’d like to talk about today is MoP buff foods. Blizzard has been kind enough to complicate the hell out of it, so here’s what you need to know :

Cooking is now split into 6 “ways”. Each of these is levelled separately (your cooking skill for purposes of achievements etc is the maximum of these), and is tied to a specific stat (except for way of the brew, which I’ll ignore). Each of these ways ends with a feast, and a normal single buff food. Essentially, if you eat the “wrong” feast, you get 250 of your primary stat (375 if stamina). If you eat the “right” feast, you get 275 of your primary stat (415 if stamina).

Wok 275 Agility, 375 Stamina;

Oven 415 Stamina;

Steamer 275 Spirit, 375 Stamina;

Pot 275 Intelligence, 375 Stamina;

Grill 275 Strength, 375 Stamina.

All of the single buff foods give 300 of the stat associated with the food (450 for stamina).

Sea Mist Rice Noodles = 300 Agility

Steamed Crab Surprise = 300 Spirit

Chun Tian Spring Rolls = 450 Stamina

Mogu Fish Stew = 300 Intellect

Black Pepper Ribs and Shrimp = 300 Strength

On top of all of that, if you level every single one of the ways to max, you can complete the quest “master of the ways” which gives you access to the final ultimate feast, which gives 275 to your primary stat (415 stamina) to all.

So, the question is, how do you deal with this? Do you force all raiders to farm up their 300 (415 stamina) food, or do you just accept that banquets are the way to go, and assist your healers in obtaining their 300 spirit food? Is the 25 in a stat really going to be worth all of the farming time involved for your 10/25 raiders?

I guess the answer to that question is based on your personal feelings on the matter. If you’re a world/realm top guild, you’ll probably suck it up for the extra 25, knowing you need to push your best. If you’re in a more casual guild, you’ll probably feel, as I do, that it’s just not worth the amount of effort and admin involved.

The sad part of this quest, however, was that once you finished it, the quest wasn’t repeatable. While you could buy yak mounts from the vendor (either a gray one or a blonde one), it wasn’t quite the same as the magical color-changing yaks from the quest.

In the recent patch notes, however, was a line that said this:

The Yak Wash will now make all but the filthiest Yaks sparkling clean.

So, I decided to take my dirty yak mount back to the wash:

And my yak mount changed colors! It washed my yak mount! It’s a temporary effect (when you dismount & re-mount, they revert back to their original colors), but it makes me really happy to see the attention to detail. So, what is your favorite part of Mists of Pandaria?

So, the questing experience was pretty nice, except for the last few bars trying to hit 90 this weekend. However, once I hit 90, I was totally overwhelmed with all the things I needed to do! So, today, as I went on my journey of discovery, anguish, and frustration… I took notes! Now, I’m sharing these notes with you.

Here’s the general plan of what to do when you hit 90:

Train Pandaria Flying (At shrine of the seven stars or the shrine of the two moons)

Start Golden Lotus first! You have to be revered with Golden Lotus before you can unlock Shado-Pan & August Celestial quests, so in this way, the reputations are somewhat gated.

Klaxxi is another rep you can start right away to start working to unlock the justice/valor gear, though you have to do a bunch of dread wastes quests to unlock it. Unless you need blacksmithing recipes, you can probably survive without this for a little while.

Things like the anglers, lorewalkers, and cloud serpent reps can all wait until after you start raiding unless you need specific patterns from them.

You can also start the daily quests for cooking, which will help with raiding food

The daily quests are easier if you do it with someone else, so grouping in general is recommended.

Start running scenarios or finishing dread wastes quests to get the gear you need to run heroics:

You can also acquire Contender’s PvP blues from the AH that are 450 ilevel to boost yourself up.

The reputation grinds are great for long-term gains, but not so great in their rewards over the short-term (if you need to be raid ready by the end of this week). So, if you really need to quickly get caught up with your raiding guild, then I would recommend not spending time on the reputation grinds. Instead, get your ilevel boosted high enough through PvP gear you can buy on the AH and whatever quest items you can to start running the heroics ASAP. NOTE: The JP vendors now no longer require reputation grinds first, so you can buy JP ilevel 450 gear now! If you are running by yourself, then you can do quests (daily quests or dread wastes for items) while you wait in queue.

Conclusions:

If you are in a raiding guild that is planning on starting either this week or next week, your window for being raid-ready is pretty small, unless you were able to take time off work/school/responsibilities to get ahead at the launch of Mists. I was so overwhelmed that I had a total emotional breakdown this afternoon because I just didn’t feel like I could do all the daily quests, run instances, and make sure I was geared up in a reasonable amount of time. Since there is an overwhelming amount of things you can do when you first hit level 90, if you plan on raiding, it helps to have a clear plan for what your priorities are once you ding 90! While the race to 90 is important, it is equally important to know what to do once you ding!